5. The weighty letter of Sir Luke Fildes printed on pages 54–5 confirms unmistakably and strongly the witness already adduced. Fildes was the sole illustrator of _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_, and he testifies that Collins did not in the least know the significance of the various groups on the wrapper. Further, when Sir Luke was puzzled by the statement that John Jasper was described as wearing a neckerchief that would go twice round his neck he drew Dickens’s attention to the circumstance that he had previously dressed Jasper as wearing a little black tie once round the neck, and asked why the alteration was made. Dickens, a little disconcerted, suddenly asked, ‘Can you keep a secret?’ He then said: ‘I must have the double necktie! It is necessary, for Jasper strangles Edwin Drood with it.’ Fildes was impressed by Dickens’s earnestness, and resented the suggestion often made that Dickens’s hints dropped to members of his family or friends may have been intentionally misleading. ‘It is a little startling,’ says Sir Luke, ‘after more than thirty-five years of profound belief in the nobility of character and sincerity of Charles Dickens, to be told now that he probably was more or less of a humbug on such occasions.’ I cannot but feel that the external testimony is too strong to be explained away, and it ought to be read and pondered in its entirety. II. DICKENS’S OWN NOTE In the Memoranda made by Dickens for chapter xii., and printed on page 63, we read that Jasper ‘lays the ground for the manner of the murder, to come out at last. Night picture of the Cathedral.’ Mr. Lang himself admits, ‘It seems almost undeniable that, when Dickens wrote this note, he meant Jasper to succeed in murdering Edwin.’ {113} III. THE ADMITTED TESTIMONY OF THE BOOK The proof that Edwin Drood was murdered is to my mind mainly to be found in the pages of the story. One would have to print a large part of it in order to convey the impressive and unmistakable force of the whole, but perhaps it is better to read it as Dickens wrote it. For he himself advances nothing to modify or mitigate the conclusion that, as the result of a carefully designed plot, Edwin Drood was foully murdered by his uncle. Happily it is not necessary to spend much space on this. I believe that Dr. Jackson is fully justified in his statement that all who have written on the subject acknowledge that Jasper tried to murder his nephew, and believed himself to have succeeded. We all see that Jasper had either strangled Edwin with a black scarf and committed his body to a heap of quicklime that lay about convenient, or thought that he had done so. ‘We all see that the crime is to be proved by a gold ring of rubies and diamonds which Edwin has concealed about his person, though Jasper does not know it.’ Mr. Proctor writes: